The Statue of Secrecy
by ChocolateMilk2
Summary: When the existence of magic is revealed to muggle population, fear and misunderstanding beckon the start of a new war... 5th year fic, HarryCentic.


Although it was nearing mid-summer in the northern suburbs of London, any passer by would have thought it mid-winter. The clouds hung heavy and dark in the early morning, and by lunchtime its light rain turned into storms. Some thought it was global warming, others thought it was season change, but they all thought when the thunder started it was best time to head inside unless you were desperate for pneumonia.

All except one. Dudley Dursley had just turned fifteen, and as his size expanded, so did his exceptionally large ego. He'd taken recently to visiting his new girlfriend; rain, hail or shine. Of course, his parents didn't know, and nor did his gang, who seemed to be under the mindset that all girls were icky with germs. But Harry knew. He watched from his upstairs bedroom as Dudley tottered across the road and rang a neighbouring house's doorbell, waiting. For a moment he somehow hoped that he'd got the wrong door and batty old Mrs Figg would emerge, cats in tow. Instead a young girl appeared, cloaked in thin scarves and coats, coaxing Dudley inside.

Harry found himself looking away. There was nothing particularly ugly about Karen Smith, in fact Dudley would often boast her quite pretty; she was thin, with brown platted hair, braces and acne. Yet something about the she and Dudley reminded Harry of his aunt and uncle, a ghastly pair in their own right. He just had to wonder what she saw in him.

But Harry's own love life was going horribly in comparison, as he had to admit. Cho Chang, his former crush, had been crying the last time he'd seen her, some time after the Tri-wizard Tournament. He couldn't avoid the thought that now Cedric was dead he could be with her, but he wasn't too sure he wanted to be with her at all. It made him feel guilty. Sighing, Harry shut the window and closed the blinds, plopping back onto his bed.

His room, tiny as it was, seemed to be getting neater and neater by the year. There was an empty trunk pushed under the bed along with some old Dudley cast offs, and the Marauder's Map. Other than that the room was bare. Harry's supplies and school books had been once again locked in the cupboard under the staircase by his uncle, who had avoided him all summer, but had managed to grunt a few warnings about Hedwig, his owl, whose cage was perched on the empty windowsill. She had flown off to give a not-so-subtle letter in reply to Sirius – 'I'm fine, don't worry about it. There's been nothing from Him lately anyway.' – and never returned.

All of his other letters were crumpled in the bin, as well a few birthday sweets. Hermione had given him a scrawled card and couple of Chudley Canons posters that looked like they'd came straight off Ronald Weasley's wall. Ron himself hadn't sent Harry anything, which was strange, because as far as he knew they hadn't been fighting anytime in the recent past. But then, there was a lot that Harry felt he didn't know – and nobody wanted to tell him, apparently. He had asked about Voldermort numerous times and got the usual answers; they couldn't say anything in letters, but everything and everyone was very busy. Too busy to for him, he thought. Harry had also thought his friends would never leave his side; even when Dobby the House-elf had stopped his letters in second grade they hadn't stopped writing, but now the efforts they were showing him, however unheeded, were strangely poor indeed.

Downstairs, Harry heard a shriek, and a tinkle of breaking china. There was a loud thumping noise, as if a baby elephant had slipped over, and then silence. Soon enough came a long, slurred row which he couldn't make out the words of, and finally, the unmistakable call; "Potter!" As curious as he was – nothing interesting ever happened in the Dursley household – Harry couldn't help but sigh, slipping out of his room, and trudging down to the kitchen, making sure to jump the bottom step. So much for his time alone.

The scene when he got there, to his surprise, was actually quite interesting; bony Aunt Petunia's horrified face, Vernon Dursely's purple furious one, and Dudley, defiant, holding a sobbing Karen Smith to his chest. If he hadn't been so surprised Harry might have laughed; evidently Dudley's supposed secret had been revealed to his parents. He himself had threatened Dudley about telling Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon about her before, but had never had the chance to do so. Now it seemed they knew, and he started to move away; what did they want with him? Had Dudley repeated his blackmail back to them? Were they mad at him too? That was when he noticed the large ginger bundle in Karen's arms.

At about the same time, Vernon noticed Harry and turned on him. "Have you been killing cats?" He roared, his chin wobbling dangerously. Harry was torn between laughter and gaping.

"What- what do you mean?" He said, "I haven't been killing anything. How could I, when you haven't let me leave the house!"

To Harry's relief, he seemed to accept this, sinking himself into a kitchen chair. "Go get a paper bag." Petunia snapped, fussing over Vernon. Harry did, and a snuffling Karen lowered the body onto the table. He couldn't help but stare at the form; it seemed in an eerily familiar way as if something had come and sucked away its life. It was one of Mrs Figg's cats, he realised, as he wrapped it. Well that would explain the tears- the Smith girl had probably found it starved in some bin or another.

She had gone back to snuffling into Dudley's bulk, but she managed to tell Mrs Dursley, "It was _terrible_. We saw poor little Muffin up Wisteria Walk, I think he got stuck in the big drainpipe, 'cause he was all wet and he still smells like sewerage. There were these massive spiders everywhere, and one fell in my hair-"

"Wait," Harry interrupted. Dudley gave him a warning look, but he went on, "Did you say spiders? And pipes?"

She continued without heed, "-Then I saw his corpse and then it was hanging from this thing, and I screamed, because I've never seen or really smelt anything dead before, and it was all stiff and hard like he had been petrified for years or something, and then Dudley had to carry it back home, in the _rain_."

Petrified. Harry suddenly realised where he'd seen such a thing done to a cat before. It had been three years before back at Hogwarts, and a snake had been moving through the school waterways, a snake that spiders had been afraid of; a basalisk. He had a sudden vision – not a real one, thankfully - of the ginormous reptile slithering through Little Whingeing's waterworks system.

But what was he supposed to do; smuggle a rooster into Privet Drive? Harry remembered the last time he'd tried something so rash. He'd ended up with an aunt blown halfway across Muggle London and people screaming at him to stay inside. Besides, he wasn't even sure the cat was petrified; Proffessor Dumbledore in all his glory, hadn't been certain the last time. Somebody had probably just cast _Petrificus Totalus_ on it anyway. Harry shook the wondering of who exactly would be around to cast such a thing out of his mind and told himself it was dead.

As if reassuring his fears, Uncle Vernon, who was staring at him and the wrapped up, said, "It's not going to jump onto two legs and walk!" He snorted at his own joke, then looked back to the oblivious Karen Smith fearfully, "Go bury it in the garden, and keep away from Petunia's roses, you hear me? _Make sure the neighbours don't see_."

Nodding glumly, Harry trudged outside to the tiny front yard, carrying the corpse in his hands as he walked. He felt it getting heavier and heavier with every step. He realised he couldn't bring himself to bury something that could still be comatose. Instead, Harry found himself walking quickly backwards, sneaking through the hallway, pausing for a moment at the staircase. Annoyingly, it took him only a moment to pick the lock on the door beneath the stairs, as he had a strange feeling someone picked it before- the Weasley twins, two years earlier. He was angry at himself for assuming it locked all summer earlier.

The cupboard was fairly bare, containing only some spare textbooks, cloaks and a box of Quidditch supplies, but Harry felt as if he had hit the Jackpot. No more waiting for O.W.L results in vain, he thought, piling the stuff out. Even so, he hesitated before lying the cat in the brown, paper bag in his old cot. Thinking he was being stupid, Harry shut the door and picked everything back up again, quickly deciding not to re-enter the havoc in the kitchen. Instead he decided to make his way back to the smallest bedroom, hoping or rather, knowing no one would notice his sudden disappearance.

And they didn't, or not for some time, at least. Not until long after Karen Smith had gone home. Harry had imagined all sorts of things he could be doing in the meanwhile, packing all his extra things in his school trunk, polishing his Firebolt broomstick with his new kit, or even writing rude messages on Dudley's room wall, but instead he found himself listening to the patter of the rain, the rain which seemed to drone out the Dursley's fighting getting louder from below. He hadn't realised he had in fact fallen asleep until a crack of loud thunder had woken him up.

It was later now. The night had turned Harry's room the pitch black colour of the skies, the skies which he saw coal-black when he opened his window after a few moments of confusion. But the sky wasn't the only the thing he saw. For some reason the pouring rain had stopped, and two awkward teenagers huddled in its backdrop of puddles, whispering to each other like a word to loud could break open the floodgates once again. But maybe that wasn't the only reason, for the fatter of the two illuminated by the lamp-post, gestured to a window close to Harry's. Dudley was afraid of waking anybody up. Yawning, Harry was about to fully open window and call to them and ask what they thought they were doing outside at that time of night, or morning really, when Karen Smith's angry mutter caught him in mid-sentence.

"-body of Mrs Figg. It was nothing, okay? I lied to your mother. That drainpipe was empty, I know it was, don't-"

Dudley shushed her, and horror flooded Harry. Everybody knew about Mrs. Figg. In fact, it was one of Petunia's favourite gossip topics, and she would constantly whisper about it to the neighbours, or to her friends when she was on the phone. About two or three weeks earlier Mrs. Figg had disappeared. The police had been called and the Missing Persons Unit had conducted a search of the immediate area, but they hadn't found anything. She had probably just gotten lost somewhere, or perhaps she was suicidal. Old people were always dying, and many people had thought she was mad anyway. What reason was there to be alarmed? But the entire issue was a black mark on their clean district. Some of the families in their street had moved away, but others were less cowed, even taking some of her orphaned cats up for adoption. It might have even been Karen's cat that was Petrified.

But Harry didn't think on all this. He rummaged through his new collection of belongings quickly, looking for his invisibility cloak. For a second he realised the irony of losing something invisible, but then his hand brushed over something silky and faint, and he threw the cloak over his head, peering out of the window quickly. Karen and Dudley still hadn't moved from their standing point in the centre of the road. So Harry quietly started to crawl through the window and make his way downwards, grappling for the stone bricks as handholds. Out of his invisible pocket hung his Holly wand.

Harry hadn't actually realised how high up his window was. A cool night breeze calling for more rain whistled in his ears, and the shrub at the base of the garden seemed smaller than ever. The bottom of his invisibility cloak barely flapped over his feet. Harry started to realise what a bad idea this had been. But he couldn't risk Karen or Dudley seeing the front door open, and the back door, unlike the Cupboard under the Stairs, was certainly always kept locked. At first he slowly made his way down, looking for footholds in the clean slated walls, but Harry's foot slipped, and he made a wild scramble, before falling into the rosebush below with a thump.

"What was that?" Karen said. For a few seconds Harry just lay there in the silence, not daring to move despite the cuts on his legs. Then he slowly shifted himself around and surveyed the scene. Karen was holding Dudley's arm about two feet away from Harry, an odd expression on her face. She let go of Dudley at once. "Look, it was probably nothing, alright? It's too cold to be going out right now, anyway. Bring one of your gang members with you. I'm going back to bed."

Dudley's smile faltered. "Don't be like that, baby." He tried, and when that tactic didn't work, he switched to, "Wait! Be serious- you know I can't go with any of them. What if they grassed? And it's like, midnight, and they wouldn't wanna get up now. Come on, you're the only one who understands. You're not chicken, are you?"

"Well maybe I am," replied Karen, and there was a quiver in her voice. "That place is creepy, and I- shut up! Stop laughing! You say I'm the only one who understands, I think maybe I don't understand at all. One day you come up to my place with a couple of mates to hang out and then there's a dead lady and we're running down the street and the cops are everywhere. Your family gets involved. Forgive me if I don't want that happening again. And we're through by the way, don't call me anymore. I'm going back to bed."

There was silence. Dudley didn't try to stop her this time. Harry had obviously just eavesdropped on something beyond their relationship, but the facts didn't add up Karen had obviously lied to Dudley's parents, but the tears and the crying seemed real. Something had to be an act. Why had they bothered to get Dudley's parents involved at all? Why, if the police had showed up the week before, had they gone back today? Just to find _another_ corpse? It all seemed too good to be true.

Annoyed, Dudley started to walk off down the lane, and Harry hesitated before adjusting the cloak and following him. There was no turning back now, and he was honestly curious. Dudley turned onto Magnolia road and then Magnolia Crescent. It started to rain again, a sudden downpour of shower that saturated Dudley and had Harry's invisibility cloak sticking to the sides of his skin. Puddles were everywhere. And there was the darkness, street lamps dull- and the wind, as well. Harry wished that Dudley had brought a torch, or that he himself wasn't hiding and could light his wand. Then Dudley finally came to a stop, and this time walked slowly, treaded to the shelter of the alleyway squeezed between two houses, and linked between Mangolia Crescent and Wisteria Walk. The first place Harry had seen Sirius. He tried to drown out the memory; there was a lump in his throat.

And evidently there was one in Dudley's as well, since he moved towards the one disturbance in the fairly empty passage, a large drainpipe that Harry had never noticed consciously before. Dudley moved down to his knees and called shakily, "Hello?" Then louder, "Hello, Mrs Figg? It's Dudley Are you in there? Hell-" There came no response.

Soon the rain drowned out his words, an unnatural icy chill settling upon it. Harry stood straight and still. The chill was odd. Perhaps as if something or someone had just died- a deadened way about anything and everything. Dudley cried out, but Harry either didn't notice or forgot, absorbed in a faintly recognisable feeling of never being happy again. He moved towards it. His mother was shrieking, the scene of her death replying in his mind as the dementor loomed towards him, letting him peer under its hood

"No!" Someone yelled. Harry was tackled against the high fence, and his breath returned to him suddenly, all at once. He gasped and coughed, blacking out for a moment, before he could catch the face of his rescuer, who was still holding him tightly back. The first thing he absently noticed was that through their cloak they were dry, and warm. Did that mean they were a wizard? Could they cast a patronus? Dudley gasping again distracted him. The dementor, who shied of Harry's strange saviour, had swooped in on Dudley, who was now strangely still and quiet. Horror washed over Harry anew. Dudley couldn't be saved. He looked as if he were petrified. Kissed. Vomit rose in Harry's throat; Dudley was just like Cedric, just like Cedric. Gone.

Harry tried to escape from his bondage, tried to scream, but a hand clamped over his mouth and a voice hissed in his ear, "Quiet!" Another dementor had joined the first. But Harry didn't listen, he struggled for freedom, his own wand in his pocket, maybe if he had his wand he could repel the dementors instead… "_Petrificus totalus_," The person cast, and Harry went as stiff and as limp as a doll. It was a horrible feeling: Harry knew that if he ever saw Neville Longbottom again he would apologize profusely for the whole incident with it and Hermione in second year.

In his awkward, immobile, position, Harry could no longer see Dudley, but instead could see the man's face, a long, pockmarked face hidden by half a Death Eater's mask. But if this was a Death Eater, it was one that Harry had never seen before- and he was hardly acting the part. Saving Harry for Voldermort he could imagine, leaving Dudley to the dementors yes, but petrifying, of all things? It was surreal. The man had an icy calm of the situation about him- he was looking beyond the alleyway as if someone unseeable stood there. Harry wasn't sure he was surprised that there was.

"You Rookwood?" Asked the gravely voice. There was a pause and then a stumble back- "What the hell did you bring the dementors for? I thought our boss agreed that-"

Augustus Rookwood, Harry realised. He remembered the name from his dreams, but it held little relevance to him. Augustus muttered an incomprehensible spell and Harry floated in the air, awry from his surroundings. Harry stared up at the stars and knew that something black and omniscient might loom over his face any second, and he would have no defense against it. Were the dementors still there? It still felt so cold. In interrupting the stranger, Rookwood answered Harry's question. "I didn't bring them," He said, and there was an over-confident and affable, almost teasing tone to his voice, "Probably someone from the ministry, they were after _him_, but I don't think they'll come back with me around. You didn't find any trouble, did you?"

The stranger, unable to hide his shock at only just noticing The Boy Who Lived captured, floating bound in the air, yelped lightly, then covered it with a cough. "Did run into something, actually." He replied. "A muggle girl out in her pyjamas, calling for someone called Dudley Dursley. I jumped on her, and shoved her down a bush, but was caught by a woman who wasn't such a stupid muggle. A witch."

Karen Smith was the muggle girl, thought Harry, though the rest of the conversation went way over his head. Harry could just picture Karen, all of a sudden all fat tears and apologies off down the road with a torch in her hand, oblivious to the shadow gaining on her every move down to the alleyway. "Was the woman an auror? An order member?" Rookwood prodded in his same easygoing way. "Both?"

The other shrugged. "Could have been, didn't get to see her all that much, slipped right through my fingers. But I think she's a metamorphagus, 'cause I saw her eyes- they were like kaleidoscopes." He said in that rough, harsh speech- but it took a softer layer. Discovering this, he muttered, "Not that she's anything I'd ever touch."

Augustus laughed. Fakely. "Get your mind out of the gutter," he said, and Harry wondered on how unusual the scenario was- a possible Death Eater chatting with another possible Death Eater about his love life while two passing dementors frolicked somewhere over the Little Whingeing scene and he hung there, isolated. Of course, Harry was still trying to free himself, but the efforts were much like his friends' attempts at correspondence- defeated. It wasn't like the third task, where the rush of a death's adrenaline left him in a do or die situation and he was filled with enough confidence and terror for his insides to burst. Besides, Harry was kind of curious, and if he learned something valuable, then maybe someone might tell him something for once.

That decision may have decided everything, seeing, because beneath Harrry, Augustus took a small golden coin from his pocket, a portkey. He placed it in Harry's palm and it heated up. Augustus said, "Tell my master I said hello." And then he was truly laughing, a hollow, meaningless type of bark, that for some reason reminded Harry of Sirius. The stranger was starting to remind Harry of Remus too, in a wolfy type of way, there was the same sort of haunting guilt in his eyes_. It's a portkey. It's taking me to Voldermort _was Harry's last wild thought_, I'm going to see my parents again. I'm going to die. _ He was wrong. Everything was black except the sky, which spat buckets of grey in the last glimpse of a final warning.

There was a tug at Harry's navel, and then he was gone.

--

Okay, done. Finally. Believe it or not, I put a lot of time and hard work into this itty-bitty thing. And even now chapter one's finished I still think it's too messy, the start being the only thing I really like - though it's kind of unnessecary, since everyone's familiar with the 5th year scene anyway. I was having trouble with the whole window thing and dementor thing, and so decided to vary it a bit, forgive me for the clichés.

To any/all MR readers: did you catch the Book4 reference? And no, I haven't abandoned the fandom forever, just might be busy with this for a little while.


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